I can't seem to get an accurate temperature reading with my IR thermometer.

When I open the lid and the stone reads 950°F, then it settles down to something like 800°F after a few seconds. I think the surface of the stone cools down which is my problem. I plop the pizza on the stone and next thing I know it's burning. I need to open the lid, let off some heat, then close the lid for a few seconds, then take another temperature reading. Like I said, this is going to take some experimenting.

BUT... when the temperature finally gets right, some good NY style pizza is the result! The kids absolutely love it and devour everything that I make. No leftovers!

My most recent tests (a few months ago) resulted in burned pizza crust. The bottom was becoming burned very quickly. My IR thermometer showed the stone at ~700 degrees and it was still burning. So I'm begining to wonder whether the brick coal-fired pizza ovens of NYC are ~800 degrees at the roof of the oven, and only ~600 degrees on the deck.

Interesting thought, in my barbecue pits I have the same thing happening, close to the top the temp might be a 100 degrees or higher than a foot lower in the horizontal section.I think you have something here.

Maybe this is what I need to get instead of a whole new oven. What's the final verdict on this? Do you recommend it? My regular oven will not get nearly hot enough for a thin crust pizza, and my toaster oven is really too small. Has anyone tried the Biaggia Pizza Oven?

I use a Tec Patio II grill to cook NY style pies. The temperature at the grate level is supposedly 800 degrees. It takes about 4 minutes to fully cook a pie. I wedged unglazed quarry tiles into the grate channels on the sides of the pizza stone to uniformly cook the top of the pie. Results are excellent. Expensive though.

pftaylor - the Tec sounds interesting. I'm just trying to picture how you are using the quarry tiles. Do you put a pizza stone on the main grill, put some vertically on two sides, and some tiles on the elevated grill?

2. The Pizza Bella gets waaaay too hot. The stone, which should be relatively cool compared to the air above the pizza, is heated from below which results in it super-heating. Let me tell you... an 800 degree stone scorches the bottom of a pizza! The first two pizzas are always burnt to a crisp in the Pizza Bella... by the time I do a third, the stone has cooled suffiently.

After some reading about pizza ovens I was wondering if using a low protein flour like WhiteLily might make this little pizza oven work. Use a recipe without fat and sugar. the whitelily should be close to 00 flour I would think. If the pizza comes out to light then do a mixture of flours.

Hi Steve, well I also have a Pizza Bella oven and its the best thing since pizza by the slice! I used to try and fiddle with my oven..never being able to get the stone hot enough or the surrounding temp hot enough to bake a perfect pie. After seeing your pics I realized this is what I should purchase. I agree with you that it only cooks a 12" pie and temp is really hot BUT... after using it a while my pies were coming out excellent!!!! Next decided to try pizza party at band practice..(play keyboards as well)... I made 6 doughs...Muir Glen tomatoes, cheese etc... set the thing up at my friends house and cranked out 6 of the best pies...the guys were amazed. One guitar player is a CIA chef and could'nt believe I made them! A true compliment for a master chef. The pies were light, crispy, with some charring, and tasted amazing! Needless to say guys wanted to know where to get one.

A few weeks ago I ran across this old post about the Pizza Bella oven. When Steve mentioned that the unit actually got too hot (800 degrees) I thought that I would give it a try for my Neapolitan pizzas where I actually prefer that extra high temperature. I found a used one on ebay for $16 and figured that I might as well try it.

I just wanted to write this post because I had a totally different experience than I expected, and I might have figured out why some people seem to love it, and some seem to hate it. The version I picked up was the deep dish model. This version has an extra insert for deep dish, but also has the standard stone, and that is what I used. I have found that with the unit on max, and preheating for 10 minutes or even up to an hour the temperature never got above 550. This was not high enough for my Neapolitan pies, but worked perfectly with my New York style pies. I can recommend it to anyone who wants an inexpensive alternative to cranking up the oven for New York Style pizza.

My guess is that the deep dish version has more space between the bottom heating element and the stone, and that keeps the temp to a even and manageable 550.

1) Lack of height in the oven between stone and heating element, and 2) the diameter of the heating element is too small.

If a pizza is larger than the circular heating element in the lid or above about 8", it easily touch the heating element and crust or toppings burn to carbon in seconds.

Also, the outer rim of the pizza does not bake enough, when the pizza is made larger than the heating element.

However, if the pie is small enough, it makes a good result when the tweaking of the thermostat is right. The instruction tells you only to bake the pizza during the time the heating is on, so it means in my experience, keep the thermostat around mark 1½ to 2, and crank it up to 2½ to 3, 30 sec. before the pizza is loaded onto the stone.

I will measure the distance between the heating element and the base when home later today, and it would be interesting to have some measures of "The Bella".

The major advantage of the oven is that it is quite quick to heat, and will take the first pie after 10-15 minutes heating up.

Henrik, It sounds like there might be a little more space in the Pizza Bella, although from looking at your picture they appear to be REALLY similar. I have not had a pie touch the element, and the heat up top seems pretty uniform. I do tend to make fairly thin pies, though. It is certainly not the perfect pizza cooking device, and you do have to play some games to get it to work right. I still prefer my oven, but this is a great alternative since they are now so cheap on ebay. I look at it more as the perfect tool to have if you are going camping in a motorhome, want to keep utility costs down, or are worried about heating up your kitchen too much in the middle of summer. I am a big proponent of having home cooked pizza all year!